Off to Greece...first calamity

10.05.13
The meal was very good and a motley crew has assembled who are well travelled, interesting and not taking things too seriously which may prove a problem for our revered leader sometime in the future. We have made instant friends with one of the 2 caravanners  Geoff & Sue who are parked next to us, arrived at the same time and seem to be on our wave length..... and may prove handy for transport with their car.
11.05.13
At leisure. Into San Marino by bus (with a crowd of fellow tourers) which is not so much a country as a shopping mall and pizza parlour. Pleasant enough place with great views but little to warrant lingering. Nice lunch with our new best friends .
12.05.13
Left campsite at 9am  for run to Ancona (119 km) where we boarded ferry overnight to Igoumenitsa  in Greece. Farcical loading procedure involving much shouting and swearing which could have been avoided by simply explaining where they wanted each unit to park instead of assuming we were mind readers. Left port at 14.00 - ETA 08.00/09.00 depending on who you ask. Bob not feeling too well.
Food & drinks on board Minoan Lines extremely expensive - 42€  for dinner for 2 indifferent plates and 2 drinks. Good chat with Geoff & Sue, now officially  our new best friends ( or Onbf ) sitting on the deck in glorious sunshine as we sailed the Adriatic. Passable night in cabins as the camping deck was full . Times all to cock as Greece is CET +1HR  and the boat operates on Greek time always. So up at 06.30 but docking was 09.00 and not 08.00 as we had been told so a lot of sitting around.
When we rejoined vehicles Geoff found flat tyre on caravan ( double axle jobby.... V.expensive on toll roads). Managed to reinflate and we followed them to nearest fuel station ( diesel 20c cheaper than Italy so everybody needed to fill up) where nice man got in his car and led them off to a tyre shop. We stayed at fuel station and are waiting for them to return as I type..(unless they've been sold into slavery already)

The merry band assembles..

9.05.2013
From Bellinzona to Parma was uneventful apart from chaos at the Italian border where one or other of the customs were on a go slow. Fortunately I spotted a seemingly empty lane for caravans, overtook 2 lanes of stationery traffic for 500 metres and whipped through without anyone seeming to notice or care if they did. We were probably caught on CCTV and have a European arrest warrant out. The mirth was short lived as we ran into hell on earth transiting the Milan tangential or the product of the M25 and. spaghetti junction.. Chaos was a polite description. Then on to Parma and a very pleasant little campsite in the countryside at Tabiano, a thermal spa town.
10.05.2013
To San Marino by 1pm and meeting up with the rest of the group who seem a happy bunch. We have drinks and a meal this evening and and no doubt there will be more to say on group dynamics in a while.

Into Switzerland...

07.05.2013

A good run through the Vosages after a brief but unnecessary detour into Nancy for supplies of bottled water and red wine ( I wanted to make sure that we had plenty of the essentials on board as Greek wine is crap and Turkish is expensive and Italian supermarkets not as plentiful as elsewhere so as we were heading into Germany via Switzerland  decided to stock up asap on French wineboxes. We had to cross the centre of the town at 9.30  ... And I mean centre... to find the Auchan S/M which was not good and expensive and then discovered lots of better options on the route.....) Anyway, we are now sorted . Spent the night at Bad Sackingen in aire @ €10.

08.05.2013

Great run down to the Italian border, with stunning views of snowcapped mountains (Bob was most upset when I discovered that the pass over the St. Gottard was still closed)  stopping at incredibly expensive Swiss campsite which is OK but close to motorway and noisy. Bob did the driving from Bad Sack.. down to Kussnacht and managed to negotiate gods own traffic jam round Zurich and roadworks from hell on the only single carriageway joining two motorways between Schwyz and Altdorf that was twisty and narrow which she loves.....not. It took ages to find anywhere to pull off and changeover and when we finally did it was only 1/2 mile from the next motorway.....hey ho, all good experience but I did have to change my trousers.
Queued for an hour to get through the stacking for the St Gottard .....strangely busy for a Wednesday I thought....and then took the pretty route to Bellinzona where we  stopped at the extremely expensive TCS site near the noisy motorway.
Original plan to have tomorrow as rest day has been  altered and we shall head to Parma to ham it up.
......later......have discovered after a walk that the noise is not the motorway but the raging Ticino river just over the bank so apologies.

The adventure begins....

May 6th 2013
Spent the night at Gravelines and left at 9am in glorious sunshine.....  just the ticket for the start of an adventure. As we are fulfilling my desire to follow the crusader trail we have adopted the personas of a knight and his squire and the Gf (courtesy of Blackadder) is now referred to as Bob ...(to whom I find myself strangely attracted when we wrestle like lads do..).
Bob decided to do driving on this trip in case of emergencies like P&M in Croatia last year and before we left drove down to Somerset for the service and most of the way back. All that remained was to get her (him) driving on the continent which has happened for nigh on 40 years.....so after the morning tea   stop, Bob took the wheel for a couple of hours thro Belgium and down to Luxembourg. In his (her) defence, the roads in Belgium are now the worst in Europe with potholes the size of dustbin lids which have to be dodged constantly whilst trying to avoid being rear ended by Lithuanian maniacs delivering Russian prostitutes by the lorry load to paedophiles in Belgium and then having 30 miles of roadworks with lanes so narrow that traffic was moving in sequence to avoid side swiping.......and the lane markings were non existent in places where we had to switch motorways so it was a bit fraught.....but Bob coped well and I only screamed once.
So well in fact that we made Luxembourg ahead of schedule and merely stopping to refuel at £1 a litre, pushed on to Metz by 3.30. We intended overnighting at an aire by the river Moselle but it was overflowing(campsite, not river) so we stopped at the camping municipal next door which was very pleasant. 5 main walk into town which is well worth a visit and the cathedral is most impressive with stained glass from the 13th.C to Chagall in the 20th.
Very buzzy city. Good place to visit.

On the road to Turkey

More than 12 months ago I saw the chance to join a group on a trip to Turkey and persuaded the Gf that despite her trepidation and misgivings  this  would be fun.  So after a great deal of planning and research we are sitting in aire near Calais on a very pleasant sunny evening (which happens to be her birthday) contemplating a thousand mile journey to San Marino where we shall meet up with the other 10 vans in 5 days on Friday 10 May before heading across the Adriatic to Greece and on to Turkey. We've been vaccinated against hepatitis despite my protestations that I didn't share dirty needles or bodily fluids with homosexuals and tetanus despite my assertion that I had bad reactions to it ( and subsequently had a very uncomfortable 4 days). The van has been serviced and prepared so tonight -in  true Crusader style - will be spent in prayer as we prepare to take the Cross and meet the infidel at gates of Asia. We are looking forward to a great adventure.

Scary stuff.........

Wild man of the woods meets his match.......

Another Month passes..........

4th.MARCH 2013

Well there's a month gone and apart from the loss of many little grey cells and probably quite a lot of the functions of my liver, not a lot to show for it.Except that it's been a very social,enjoyable and fun.

The Gf returned to the Uk on March 2nd in order to be with the family for Mothering Sunday and will return on the 11th. In the end Nick drove us to Seville ( 90mins drive, 30 mins to discover how to get into the car park)
as he and Dave had hired a car for a month and were looking for things to do to justify it. Larry has still offered to provide the transport for the return trip but as he will have to drive friends to Gibralter airport the following day I may ask Dave...or Mike...or Bryn...whatever. Or drive the van there as a last resort as I would have to use the long stay carpark at 14€ for only a very short stay, plus 14€ in tolls plus fuel for a 180 mile round trip at 30mpg as opposed to 45mpg in a small car.

Right, so what's been happening to explain the attractions of wintering in Spain. Well not really the weather. The sun has shone a great deal and is very hot but overnight temps have been down to a very unseasonable 4-5c making evenings and early mornings very cold. There has been snow less than 100 miles away (Seville & Ronda) and blizzards and bad snow from Madrid to the north. This has been caused by the Jetsteam lying just over the straits of Gibralter rather than north of Scotland and pulling cold air down over the whole of Europe rather than pulling warm air up from Morocco.
Consequently we've had winds most of the time that are very cold if you are not sheltered or outside of 12-3pm. The Spanish think its start of the ice-age and wear more clothes than the Gf whilst the brits stoically walk around in shorts as its just like the average uk summer. The Gf now has a ski mask whilst cycling and has alarmed more than one passing police car and several shopkeepers. She's been christened Eskimo Nell on the campsite and on one very hot afternoon with no wind when she dug out her shorts for an hour or two people came from all over to gaze in wonder. I jest but those who know her will understand completely. As we move into March the temps have risen overnight due to cloud cover but we also have strong winds causing minor havoc. The low temps have meant using more gas for heating than anticipated ....electricity is metered on monthly stays, and charged at 0.25€ kwh and we are already running at about 10€ a week so using gas makes sense. Except that We now have refillable LPG cylinders and unlike the rest of europe, Spain has not embraced Autogas universally following a massive loss of life after an LPG storage tank explosion. So we have to drive to Jerez to refill which is about 40 miles away. Not really a problem as we can have lunch and a day out in a very pretty city. We've only had to go once so far but are probably getting close to one cylinder needing a refill soon. Hopefully it will last to our departure which will now be next week so that we can fill up on the way to Portugal (which has more Lpg stations than Spain).

On the quiz front we've won 4 times out of 7 and both the GF and I have each won the weekly whist tournament once bringing total earnings to date to a rather handy 126€. Since Harry & Joan have amassed 122€ in the same period we have rather cleaned up between us as no-one else has won more than once. We all felt so chuffed with this that we took Mike the Quizmaster out to lunch just to start the rumour mill rolling and managed to spend 190€ on a meal for 5 in a fantastic restaurant on the beach within feet of the crashing surf with a view to die for. Since we then won the next quiz we managed to annoy a lot of people.

Boules has become very competitive with the ladies now having the edge, the Gf,Patricia and Joan making a formidable team even without Sabena who left a couple of weeks ago. The afternoon matches are extremely good fun and the apres-boules does nothing for the liver.

Lots of good evenings at the restaurant, including a very good Valentines dance, a paella night and a complimentary Andalucia day meal ....when the food is free why do we spend more on alcohol?

Don & Sandra did an excellent BBQ spare ribs on their enormous gas bbq which is so large I'm sure that they have to tow it behind the motorhome for all the usual suspects and a very alcoholic lunch lasted from 12-7pm when it got too cold to sit out any longer.

Despite what I said about the weather we've been out and about on the bikes and had a lovely day walking along the beach towards Trafalgar, 3hrs each way and a picnic. Discovered that the tyres on my bike were wearing badly so the local bike shop replaced them with very good michelins for a reasonable 40€ (17€ each plus 6€ for fitting which as removing the wheels from electric bikes is a daunting prospect seemed a good deal to me).

That'll do for now, I'll post more later in the week.